


Sister Lover Worry

by salvadore



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Medication, Suicidal Thoughts, Yuletide, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth Childs is okay. She promises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sister Lover Worry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sceptick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sceptick/gifts).



Beth thinks about the statistics she learned in the academy: homicide statistics, _suicide statistics_ in particular. Like. Women are less violent in death. Research told her, women prefer not to leave a mess. They takes pills, they jump from buildings. They do not shoot themselves in the head.

Beth takes her service weapon from her temple and lays it on the kitchen counter. She slowly places her hands on the counter, equally on either side of it. To her left is a hand towel, and her cleaning kit. Beth takes two deep breaths in and out with her eyes closed, moves her fingers until they're equidistant, and feels the melancholy seep out of her.

Suddenly she's in motion, and with the quick manner belonging to muscle memory she removes the magazine, checks the chamber for any rounds and begins disassembling it.

 

Beth drives to see Art the night before her review about Maggie Chen. She can hear Art inside, moving around with a game on in the background. She doesn't remember him talking about a game being on, and maybe it's a recording, but Beth doesn't know for sure. Ever since she discovered she was a clone, she kind of stopped keeping up with anything else.

It's late and, although her hands should be cold, Beth is sweating. Pressing her palms her thighs, Beth wipes the sweat off on her tights. She shivers and breathes out deeply. She can see her breath. Thick like smoke and it's hard not to think about Cosima. Beth breathes out again and maybe smiles thinking about the last time she smoke to Cosima, how she had warned the girl that she was a cop. Cosima had just rolled her eyes on the other end of the Skype call and lit up all the same. Watching Cosima was like watching a surreal what-if come to life.

What-if Beth had done what her mom and dad had wanted and she had gone to college? She wouldn't have hair like that, but she'd always played with the idea of smoking. How it would look, teasing out from between her lips. Beth had wanted, once upon a time, to be like Frenchy in _Grease_.

She wondered if Cosima could release smoke nice and slow like Frenchy had. Seeing it on a face identical to her own could be fulfilling. Maybe?

Beth breathes out again, and watches the steam wisp upward above her before disappearing altogether. Her eyes sting from the cold and really, loitering on Art's doorstep isn't what she came here to do.

Beth pounds on the door. She hears a “Yeah, yeah,” from inside and steps back out of the way, so Art can see her properly in the peep-hole. Art opens the door and Beth just wants to walk into his arms like she did after his mother died.

She had been comforting him then, but the warm spread of his big hands on her shoulder blades had warmed her more than Paul had for months. And though Art had shook against her, crying into her hair on his shoulder, Beth had come away feeling that she'd been the one comforted. She'd placed her hand on Art's shoulder when he was done crying and he had let her go. He'd wiped his eyes dry of tears and coughed the gruffness back into his voice.

“Tell no one that happened, Childs,” Art had said. He'd still been a young detective then, and trying so hard to be hard and win admiration that way, with masculinity rippling in his every action as an officer. It was why Beth had began to call him “dipshit” that first day they were partnered up.

She had called him that in the moment as well. Though her voice was gentle. “Okay, dipshit. Now let's go get a coffee and a donut.”

Art had looked at her gratefully, eyes still wet, before he'd sniffed back the snot that had filled his nose and told her to stop being a cliché.

“It's not a cliché. We're cops. We like donuts. It's all coincidence,” Beth told him, shoving him, gently. He didn't move under her push, solid as he is, but he did smile.

Art opens the door now and Beth can't look him in the eye.

“Beth.”

“Can I come in, Art?”

"Yeah," He pushes the door open enough for her to slip inside. She's a cop to her soul and she can't help but checking around his apartment, as subtly as possible, for anyone hiding in any corners. But no, Art is alone.

It's a baseball game on his television, but something he's probably seen before since he isn't pushing her into the living room, telling her she can talk as much as she wants _during the commercials, because_ Jesus _Childs, couldn't it wait?_ , smile on his face the whole time he keeps eye contact with the TV. And he'd be waiting for her to strike back. But he's hovering. And maybe she's underestimated how much this Maggie Chen ordeal is weighing on him as well.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?"

Beth moves toward his couch. They've been here before, making a time-line on the floor between the couch and the coffee table while the take-out they ordered cooled on the table, waiting for them. Beth likes this carpet, likes the memories she has here of being able to sit quietly with a bottle of beer in hand, Paul wasn't letting her drinking with the medication she was on, while Art yelled at the game that was on. She likes it better her than her apartment, she thinks.

"Beth?" Art's voice is stern. And yeah, he put his ass on the line as well, claiming that he'd seen Beth go through proper protocol before shooting.

Beth sits down on the couch and just barely holds herself back from putting her head in her hands and crying for the whole of it. Things had been getting better before the _clone club_ , she'd finished the two week period where the pills made her fluctuate and want to crawl into bed without relief. Irony was suicidal ideation as a symptom of anti-depressants.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she finally said to Art. Her voice was more level than anything else. "Can I stay here tonight, though?"

"Are you and Paul -?"

"We're fine," Beth interrupts. She doesn't tell Art that she knows Paul isn't in love with her. Or that she had broken down and just told him to leave. She doesn't want to say it because she doesn't want to think about how she'd realized when he said, "I love you. We'll be fine when I get back," he was lying through his perfect teeth. Beth could deal with clones and depression and a shit load more. But she didn't need to deal with her boyfriend being complicit in the whole sick plot.

She says, "Paul's out of town. I just don't want to be alone in my apartment," instead of all that. And she watches the way Art's brow furrows, rippling his skin, and how he frowns just slightly.

"It's not as if you have a girl here, do you Art?" Beth teases. She has to force it out and it hurts. Because she trusts Art. She wants to be able to break down to him, but after the mess with Maggie and what she plans to do to keep her girls safe - she can't have Art worrying and being preventative.

They drink and watch the game Art was watching before Beth stopped by. Or, really, Art watches the game and Beth watches Art. His fingers tightening around the arm rest just before a pitcher swings. How he curses under his breath at stolen bases. The same way he curses at her when he's working late and Beth catches him, cursing before letting her drag him home. His arm slipping over her shoulder, for a moment, an old habit from vice when he had CIs he needed to keep safe. Beth hadn't minded the motion, had apprecieted it even; a sign of their relationship as partners. She just liked him knowing that she could hold her own as well.

When it's time for bed, Beth slips in on the left side of Art's bed and tells Art that _it's fine, really._ Tonight isn't a night for fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch. Art grumbles about it. 

"I'm warning you now, Childs. I snore and I don't care if it bothers you." He's bluffing, and holding himself to the edge of his side of the bed. Beth is still in the outfit she arrived in, aside from her heels which she toed off moments before sliding under the coveres. She rubs her legs against the under sheet and the feeling of tights on sheets is silky. She's still in her dress because she doesn't want to sleep in just her bra. They're not that close, not really close enough for sharing a bed, but the apartment is too cold for sleeping on leather and Beth likes hearing someone else near her when she sleeps. 

She doesn't explain that to Art. Just calls him names and tells him to shut up until he's chuckling, shaking the bed with his laughter. 

Before she falls asleep, Beth stares at the wall in front of her and sees fingerprints instead of the shadows in front of her. Identical swirling patterns that led her from Allison to Cosima to Katja. All of them having made finger-print cards either for work (her and Allison) school (Cosima) or travel (Katja) and only Beth had noticed.

 

In the morning she has Art drive her back to her apartment so she can change for the hearing. And then she sneaks out the back and leaves him there. Ditching the Maggie Chen review because she has another answer.

 

Beth can't stop shaking. The tears are unexpected. She wants to get out, has for along time, but she also can't stop thinking about the money Allison gave her. And of Cosima saying they're in it together.

She bought a ticket just in case she decided to run instead, but now she's here, pacing in her heels. The sounds of the passing train mostly muffling the sound of her pacing as she weeps. She wants out but she - Beth musters up the nerve she needs and begins slowly: placing her bag down and then her coat, folded up. She slips out of her shoes. She ushers forth her training, putting on a facade and brushes back her straying hair. And looks up. Into her own eyes.

Beth thinks, _oh_. Nods to her, calm, and steps out in front of the train.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is quite sad, as fics go, especially as a Yuletide gift, but I can only hope I hit many of the things you wanted, Yuletide-Recievee, and that you've enjoyed it. ♥


End file.
